Garry Wills

Prolific journalist, historian, political columnist, and practicing Catholic Wills (now 76) writes an intensely opinionated re-evaluation of leaders and celebrities he has encountered, among them Studs Terkel, Beverly Sills, William Buckley, Richard Nixon, and more.

A history of Venice from the earliest times - Crusades - Ships and navigation - Byzantine and Gothics - Humanism - Renaissance - Merchant shipping - Scuole.

"In Reagan's America, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Garry Wills seeks to understand Reagan's appeal through understanding his audience, the Americans who found in him everything they wanted to believe about themselves.". "From the Mississippi Valley culture of Reagan's youth to the dreamland of midcentury Hollywood, from the California governor's office to the White House, Wills shows how Reagan's environment and quintessentially American careers - lifeguard, athlete, actor, union leader, and businessman - informed his values and ultimately contributed to his success as a politician.". "An authoritative biography and a fascinating cultural history, Reagan's America reveals how this savvy, charismatic leader succeeded in restoring a nation's nearly lost sense of innocence and faith in itself."--BOOK JACKET.

In what are billed as "culture wars," people on the political right and the political left cite Jesus as endorsing their views. Wills argues that Jesus subscribed to no political program--He was far more radical than that. It is only by dodges and evasions that people misrepresent what Jesus plainly had to say against power, the wealthy, and religion itself. Jesus came from the working class, and he spoke to and for that class. This book will challenge the assumptions of almost everyone who brings religion into politics--"Christian socialists" as well as biblical theocrats. But Wills is just as critical of those who would make Jesus a mere ethical teacher, ignoring or playing down his divinity--Jesus without the Resurrection is simply not the Jesus of the gospels. He argues that this does not make people embrace an otherworldliness that ignores the poor or the problems of our time.--From publisher description.

This tale of love and war set during the Korean War tells the story of Major Lloyd Gruver. The son of an army general stationed in Japan, dating a general's daughter, Gruver was happy with his life. He didn't understand the soldiers who fell in love with Japanese girls. Then he met Hana-ogi.

This book is a dazzling study of the operas Verdi adapted from Shakespeare -- and a spellbinding account of their creation. In Verdi's Shakespeare, Pulitzer Prize winner and lifelong opera devotee Garry Wills explores the writing and staging of Verdi's three triumphant Shakespearian operas: Macbeth, Othello, and Falstaff. An Italian composer who couldn't read a word of English but adored Shakespeare, Verdi devoted himself to operatic productions that authentically incorporated the playwright's texts. Wills delves into the fast-paced worlds of these men of the theater, focusing on the intense working relationships both Shakespeare and Verdi had with the performers and producers of their works. We see Verdi study the Shakespearean dramaturgy as he obsessively corresponds with his chosen librettists, handpicks the singers he feels are best- suited to the roles, and coaches them intensely. With fascinating portraits of these artistic giants and their entourages, sharp insights into music and theater, and telling historical details, Verdi's Shakespeare re-creates the conditions that allowed Verdi to complete his masterworks and illuminates the very nature of artistic creation. - Publisher.

The struggle within American Christianity now-as it has been throughout our nation's history-is between the head and the heart, reason and emotion, Enlightenment and Evangelism. The same patterns recur: a cooling of popular religious fervor is followed by a grassroots explosion in evangelical activity. This landmark analysis concludes that religion is a fertile and enduring force in American politics and-while it is necessary to be vigilant against efforts to infuse government policy with Christianity-the tension between the two is necessary, inevitable, and unending. - back of book.

Gregory Skipwith belongs to a club of eighteenth-century scholars called At Buttons. The club and the New York Public Library where Gregory works should have protected him from violence, but it doesn't. He finds himself confronted with murder and violence even in these dim places. When he and his strange crew of scholars try to cope with a conspiracy of conspiratorialists in New Orleans these reach their climax.